Whoa! It’s been a long time since DJ Uto has produced an original track, much less 3 for the same album. I guess he’s been itching to get his creative juices flowing, as 3 of the 16 tracks on QTB 23 were produced by him. The remainder of the album features hard dance/hands up artists like Italobrothers and Rob Mayth.

OMG! I can’t believe I get to use my favorite DJ Uto picture again after over 2 years! That’s right, Japan’s premier hard dance/trance compilation series is coming back after a 2-year hiatus. I have no idea what prompted the resurrection of QTB, but it might be the upcoming 10-year anniversary of Quake Records. In 2003, Quake Records was started by DJ Uto with the money he won from the Japanese reality show, Money no Tora, which may be better known to Westerners as Dragons’ Den or Shark Tank.

The first release of the label was “Money no Trance” (a play on the title of the show) and featured popular hard dance hits from Europe. It would become the first release in the Quake Trance Best series. Years later, in 2006, DJ Uto started a spinoff series called Exit Trance, which focused more on J-Trance. Soon Exit Trance became the dominant series, overshadowing Quake Trance before itself becoming overshadowed by Exit Tunes releases focusing on Vocaloid and Utatte Mita. It’s great to know that after all this time DJ Uto still has a place in his heart for what started his business in the first place.

There’s no Quake News release planned for January or February, so either this is the last release in the series or they’ll be taking a break for a while. Once again, the final list has no tracks from the preliminary one.

The 10th and possibly final release in the Quake News series. The early list probably isn’t too indicative of the final one, seeing as some of these songs have already appeared on previous QN releases.

Cascada does her best Lady GaGa impression with her latest single, included on this release. Other tracks include a trance cover of Kelly Clarkson’s “My Life Would Suck Without You” and an electro cover of ATC’s “Around the World.”

The series will no longer be limited to trance alone, and will start including electro-house as well. Once again, the series has switched to full-length versions instead of radio edits, so it’s really not that bad of a deal.